


The Final Countdown

by tardigradeschool



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Episode: s01e12 Faith, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Sick Dean Winchester
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-19
Updated: 2015-01-19
Packaged: 2018-03-08 06:25:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,056
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3198770
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tardigradeschool/pseuds/tardigradeschool
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>So, LeGrange was a bust. Still trying to find the solution, they keep going while they still can.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Final Countdown

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Последний отсчёт](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5940181) by [gemoprod](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gemoprod/pseuds/gemoprod)



(…seventeen days…)

“I was right.” Dean says. Any smugness that could have crept into his voice must be replaced by tiredness.

“I know,” says Sam.

“He was a total fraud.”

“I know.” There’s a tightness in Sam’s chest, in his hands strangling the wheel, in his jaw, slowly turning the inside of his cheek to tatters. That hope that he almost let himself have-- that maybe, just maybe, LeGrange could help-- seems to have become a black hole, collapsing in on itself, pulling any scraps of optimism in with it and making it hard to breathe. He blinks twice, hard.

Dean, lurching forward, out of breath, grabs his elbow. “Careful on the turn!”

“Yeah, Dean,” Sam says, “I know.” He keeps his eyes on the road and pretends fiercely that the reason he almost crashed the car is because he’s careless and definitely not because his eyes were getting blurry or anything.

\--

(…sixteen days…)

Dean lowers himself down to the bed. He usually flops, throws himself down carelessly, but for the last few days, his movements have been wincing and careful out of necessity. He watches, propping his chin on his crossed arms, as Sam unpacks the few unpackable things they own.

Sam doesn't look at him. "So I guess there's no chance I could convince you to go back to the hospital?"

Dean makes a disgusted noise. "Yeah, no. 'Fraid you're stuck with me for a little while longer."

Sam stops dead. "Dean-"

"Sorry." Dean doesn't sound too apologetic. "But yeah, no chance."

Sam turns around anyway, still holding to a pair of jeans that got fashionably shredded by a ghost. "Just listen, okay? I don't have another lead yet. The hospital could keep you... keep you safe. Until I found something. If you went back, it would-"

"It would do jack squat, is what it would do," Dean says, "I already signed all those pesky DNR forms, and I don't-"

"You what?" There's ocean in Sam's ears. "Without asking me?"

"Ain't your choice, man. Think I wanna get shocked again just so I can spend extra two hours hooked up to a machine?"

"Dean-"

"No."

"But-"

"No buts, Sam. I already got a pretty decent butt, and you know what it is? Mine." Sam has his mouth open, partly in shock, partly because as far as he's concerned, a Do Not Resuscitate form is basically the same as giving up, partly to express his rage that any resuscitation should come into their lives at all, but Dean cuts him off. "Listen, man. I get it. I do. Tell you what, if you don't bring me back there, I won't make any last wish jokes. 'Cause I get it. But if you put me in the hospital, you better get that I will traumatize as many nurses as I need to get out of there. Capisce?"

Sam nods, sharp, and folds the next couple shirts a little more vindictively than strictly necessary.

\--

(…fifteen days…)

“Like this?” Sam asks. He’s stretched so far forward that his feet are barely brushing the ground. All six foot four of him is sprawled under the hood of the Impala that’s become more of a family member than Sam cares to admit.

From the cooler, Dean gives a noncommittal “Ehhh…” and shrugs. “It’s easier if you hold the wrench with your left and hold on with your right.” He'd made them pull over five minutes ago in a blazing hot cornfield of Nowhere, Oklahoma, because he could hear something rattling in the Impala. Truth be told, he's kind of enjoying watching Mr Stanford 2005 struggle to work a socket wrench.

“I’m right-handed, Dean.”

Dean scoffs. “I know. I was the one who taught you how to write. Just try it, Sammy.”

“Dean, it’s not gonna work if I use my left-- Oh! That is easier.”

“Told ya.” He subtly checks to make sure Sam isn’t looking, then quietly steals Sam’s beer. He takes a subtle swig, then replaces it before Sam straightens. Dean’s halfway through swallowing when he realizes that this is probably his last beer and takes it back, bitchface be damned.

Sam sees. In all fairness, he has a superior vantage point. "Dean, you shouldn't-"

"Shouldn't listen to my pansy-ass brother? I have to say, I agree."

It's pretty hard to tell through the blinding sun and the heat haze rising off the Impala, not to mention Sam's best efforts to look annoyed, but he thinks Sam might be smiling.

\--

(…two weeks…)

Dean almost says, “I’m tired,” but catches himself just in time. He’s always tired these days. And he can’t get used to it.

There’s a hollow feeling in his chest, not from loneliness, not from fear, just from science. The hollow feeling isn’t an emotion, it’s an actual physical feeling. His heart. His stupid friggin’ heart, making him sluggish and tired, making him fade.

“Tired?” asks Sam, glancing over from the driver’s seat.

“No,” says Dean.

\--

(…thirteen days…)

“You should eat,” insists Sam. “Please, Dean; it’s not even good for you.”

The hamburger, fries, milkshake, and cherry pie that Dean ordered are, indeed, far from healthy. It’s exactly the kind of meal Dean would have devoured only a couple weeks ago. But Dean can’t bring himself to eat it, not now. He stares hard at one of the fries, willing himself to be hungry, but he isn’t.

Sam sees his harrowed expression and pushes the pie towards him. “Can’t you at least eat the pie?” Pie, he knows, is and always will be Dean’s favourite anything.

Dean sighs. Just thinking about eating makes him feel sick. Though part of the sickness might be disgust at himself. Look what a rawhead has reduced him to. Can't even eat a stupid piece of pie. “I’m sorry, man,” he says, “You’re gonna have to finish it for me.”

To Sam’s credit, he does. He eats every bite, and even though he feels just as sick as Dean does by the end of it, the sense of accomplishment more or less outweighs the nausea.

Dean laughs a little, impressed, and Sam feels disproportionately proud of himself.

\--

(…twelve days…)

Dean is too resolute (polite talk for being a stupid stubborn asshole idiot) to ask for help, but Sam can tell how light-headed he gets whenever he stands for more than a couple seconds. He knows how much Dean hates his hovering, but he also knows that Dean would hate having to be helped up from the ground even more.

Once or twice, Dean’s had to close his eyes as his vision swims, turns upside-down and sideways. Sam has stood there, clutching his elbow so he doesn’t fall over, and wishing someone could hold his elbow, hold him up, because seeing Dean like this is turning his own world the wrong way round.

Sam used to think that Dean was invincible. When they were kids, he was half-convinced that Dean was some kind of superhero.

But Dean’s favourite superhero always was Batman. No powers. Just some physical strength and a crapload of confidence.

Superman could never be defeated by a heart attack. But Batman? Maybe.

Batman's brother probably never had to listen to a shaking, half-conscious superhero dry-heaving into a backed-up motel toiler at two-thirty in the morning.

\--

(…eleven days…)

The cashier squints over the pharmacy counter. “You alright, dude?”

Dean looks up, suddenly aware of how he looks. He’s spent enough time purposely not looking in the mirror as he brushes his teeth to know how bad it is. He knows he’s pale, he knows that those dark half-circles aren’t gonna go away. The way he moves suggests extreme fatigue, and people who are forward enough to look right in the eyes don’t look for long. He looks, quite simply, like a dying person. A dying person buying aspirin as a distraction while his brother breaks into the back of a pharmacy to steal the strongest painkillers they have.

“Never been better,” he says, shrugging, and Sam, coming back from the "bathroom", almost laughs.

After that, Dean stays in the car.

\--

(…ten days…)

Sam calls Bobby. He’s put it off far too long, but he’d hoped that by now they would’ve fixed it. Fixed Dean. But their father isn’t answering, and Bobby Singer is the next best thing. (Better thing, in all honesty, and Sam half-expects his father to pop out of thin air just so he can smack him for thinking that.)

Bobby reacts as expected. He swears under his breath, then loudly, then quietly again. Sam wholly agrees with the sentiment, but doesn’t say anything until Bobby’s finished. “But, Bobby, if you know anyone who could help--”

“Sam,” Bobby says, fierce, “Put Dean on the phone.”

“He’s sleeping--”

“Put him on.” repeats Bobby, “Get Dean on the damn phone, or I swear to god I’ll drive out to wherever the hell you all are and wake him up myself.”

Sam does as he’s told. He hasn’t heard Bobby like this for ages, not since he and Dean were little and he’d argue with John about taking them on hunts.

Dean blinks awake when Sam touches his shoulder. “It’s Bobby,” Sam tells him, and hands him the phone.

“Hey, Bobby,” says Dean, gruff from sleep, Sam takes his arm and helps him sit up. Worryingly, Dean doesn’t even glare at him. Maybe, Sam hopes, it’s because he’s listening so intently.

“I know,” Dean tells Bobby. Sam wants to ask what, but Dean is looking at him in a way that means to give him a minute, and Sam figures he deserves that. So he goes to the bathroom and tries not to listen, but the motel walls are cheap and thin. Sam can’t help but hear.

“I’m sorry, Bobby,” Sam can hear, “Yeah, I know…Well, I hardly did it on purpose… No, I didn’t! Okay, good… I dunno. I’m worried about him. He’s been quiet… I guess you’re right… Oh, thanks for the reminder, Bobby, I almost forgot that I’m dying for a second there.”

There’s a sudden pause, and now Sam is listening, hard and unashamed. His throat feels tight, and there's ice inside him, freezing him. He can't feel his fingers.

When Dean speaks again, his voice is low, maybe because he knows Sam listening, maybe because Dean gets quiet when Bobby gets loud. “I’m sorry,” he says, and through the wall, his voice sounds like a rumble. “I didn’t mean-- I’m sorry.” There’s another pause, and at the end of it, Dean says, “Don’t come, Bobby. It won’t change anything. Just look after Sammy, okay? Look after Sam.”

\--

(…nine days…)

“Dean,” Sam ventures, “Maybe we should stop driving.” They’ve been travelling the way they do normally, but there’s no direction, no purpose. Driving by day, motels by night.

“No,” says Dean. “We keep going.”

“I just don’t get--”

“Sam,” he says, and turns to him. “We need to keep driving.”

Sam slows down. The road is deserted; no one’s going to drive into them. He turns. Dean’s eyes seem bigger in his now-gaunt face, and it makes him look younger. “Please, Sam,” he asks. He’s asking. That’s what really scares Sam, because Dean never used to ask. He would just say, and maybe Sam would protest and maybe he wouldn’t. He would say something, and Sam would probably disagree, and Dean would ignore him and say, "I'm in charge because I'm the oldest."

But he can’t say no, not to Dean, asking, and not to his too-young face. Sam knows, suddenly, with frightening, paralyzing certainty, that he is absolutely not ready to be the one in charge.

“Yeah, okay,” says Sam, and starts the engine again.

\--

(…eight days…)

Dean starts wearing Sam’s clothes. Sam is taller, but he hasn’t filled out. Dean was always broad-chested, lean, but too strong to be actually thin. But now all that strength is gone, and he’s lost an outlandish amount of weight. Dean’s pants just won’t stay up, so he takes Sam’s and rolls up the bottoms. Dean’s shirts are too baggy, so he takes Sam’s, pushes up the sleeves, and pulls his own over. They don't talk about how ninety degree weather should be enough to keep him warm.

“We can buy you new clothes,” Sam points out, but Dean looks at him like he’s crazy.

“Good plan, Sammy. Because we totally have the money for that and it totally makes sense to buy clothes that won’t fit you and I won’t need.”

Sam purses his lips. Time is running out. He still hasn’t found anything. But he just says, “I’ve got nothing to wear, Dean.”

Dean smiles a crooked smile and nods at his own pile of clothes. “Help yourself.”

It turns out, they fit.

Soon, neither can remember whose clothes are whose.

\--

(…one week…)

This is by no means the first time Sam has noticed Dean with a hand over his heart, brow furrowed. “Are you okay?” he asks, though he knows the question is just about useless.

It’s ten-thirty in the morning, but they’re both in their beds. Sam is searching the internet yet again, and Dean is dozing, halfway in and out of sleep. After dragging them to Nebraska two days ago for (apparently) absolutely nothing, Sam figured he'd rent a room for two nights instead of one.

“I guess so,” Dean says, which means not really at all.

Sam bites his lip. “Does it… hurt? Your heart, I mean.”

He’s carefully avoided asking this question, unsure if he even wants to know what Dean will say. Dean seems surprised too, but he answers with a shrug. “Nah.”

“I’d like the truth, Dean.” Even though he wouldn’t.

Dean sits up a little. He doesn’t look drowsy, but he looks wilted. Like all the color has faded from him. “It doesn’t hurt,” he tells him. “Not really. It just feels… weird. Different.”

“Good,” says Sam, and his voice almost breaks. He doesn't ask if Dean is lying, and Dean is grateful. He's too tired to be convincing.

\--

(…six days…)

Dean moves to the back seat of the Impala. He insists on still going, still pushing forward, but he can’t stay awake longer than about five or six hours anymore, and Sam figures he may as well be comfortable. As comfortable as you can be in the back of an old-ass car with about as much cushioning as a workbench, anyway.

“Smells like home,” Dean says with a half-hearted grin, and buries his face in the leather seat. He has to sleep with his knees almost up to his chest, since he’s longer than the Impala is wide, but he doesn’t seem to mind.

Dean sleeps in the back seat of the car he loves and Sam drives, trying to shake off the feeling of wrongness because only a month ago (forever ago) Dean was telling him pleasantly that, “Oh, Sammy, you can have a turn driving over my dead body.”

When Led Zeppelin comes on the radio, Sam turns it off so Dean won't wake up.

\--

(…five days…)

Dean just can’t stop coughing. Rough, uncontrollable coughs, from somewhere scary-deep in his chest. It terrifies Sam to no end. All he can do is try and hold Dean up while his breathing goes from scratchy to grating to near impossible. When Dean’s shoulders shake too much for him to stay up, Dean stays half propped up against him, leaning against Sam’s legs.

“You’re gonna be fine,” Sam tells him, a despairing hint sneaking in to steal the reassurance from his words, “I think your immune system was just taking a day off.”

He hopes it’s just a day. The coughing started hours ago, but now it sounds like he’s trying to hack up one (or both) of his lungs.

Dean makes a sound that’s either a scoff or a relatively quiet cough. “You…” he croaks, “Are… a big, fat… liar.” He pauses between each word, not for deliberation but for breath. It takes him a moment to continue, “Stop… reassuring me. I’m… absolutely… dandy.” He coughs again, and again, and again, and they sound hollow and painful.

Sam winces along with each one, waiting for silence before he replies, “Dean, we basically lie for a living. You’re not allowed to accuse me of being a liar.”

“Sure… I am… party... pooper...” Dean’s voice is fading, dwindling away into a hoarse whisper, but the edge of older-brother amusement is still seeping in at the edges.

Much later, Dean is asleep, heavy but too light in Sam’s lap, and even though Sam’s feet are starting to buzz with the incessant itch of pins and needles, he can’t quite bring himself to move.

\--

(…four days…)

“Sam,” Dean mumbles, and Sam snaps awake.

“What’s wrong?” he asks quickly, starting to sit up. “Are you okay? Do you--”

“I’m fine,” Dean says, and once Sam’s eyes adjust enough to the early-early-morning-dark to see that Dean is clear-eyed and, indeed, mostly fine, he settles back under the covers.

“What is it?” Sam asks. The moonlight creeping through the window gives him a half-view in black and white of Dean’s face. Light eyes, fair hair, dark shadows, hollow cheeks. Sam thinks that maybe it won’t even be a heart attack; Dean is getting so painfully underweight that Sam thinks he might just waste away first. His cheekbones are sharp, very nearly matching his narrow nose. Whenever Sam touches him, his bones feel fragile, as if they’re just under the surface, as if the skin over them is simply for decoration. But the half-light makes him seem healthier, more whole, and Sam is grateful for it.

Dean takes a while to answer. “I just remembered,” he says finally, “When you were little-really little-Mom'd make cookies. And… I'd always take two. I’d eat one, and then I’d feed the other one to you in little bits. It probably wasn’t very good for you. But you turned out alright, right?”

“Yeah,” says Sam, surprised but not confused. “I did.”

“It's jus', I thought,” says Dean, words bleeding into each other, “I remember. You don’t.”

Sam swallows, ignoring the catch in his throat. “Remember anything else?”

Dean talks until dawn.

\--

(…three days…)

The cough has come back, but much milder. It doesn’t seem to be the real problem. Dean feels like there’s something heavy resting on his chest, something making his head swim, even though he’s lying down.

"Hey, Sammy," he calls, and Sam pops up like a jack-in-the-box. A very large, very worried jack-in-the-box. "Wanna feel something cool?"

It's kind of hilarious, actually, the way Sam's face goes from concerned to surprised to horrified in the space of about two second. Dean has grabbed his hand and placed it on his chest. Sam looks at the hand, then at him, then at the hand again. "Dean," he says, alarmed, "What is that?"

Dean grins, and it absolutely does not make Sam feel better, because if Dean is offering him this sloppy, Cheshire cat smirk, like he's showing him something fascinatingly weird instead of something stomach-churning, then the painkillers must be doing their job a little too well. "Heart murmur," he says. Sam wants to pull his hand away, but he can't, partly because Dean is still holding on to his hand, partly because in a sick way, it is fascinating, feeling the funky bass beat of his dying brother's heart.

Abruptly, Dean lets him go. "That's enough of that, I think," he says. Sam follows his gaze to his own hand, realizes he's shaking, then stuffs them in his pockets. "Let's hit the road, little brother."

Sam breathes in. “Dean, I don’t think--”

“Car, Sam. Now.”

So Sam does as he’s told and scoops Dean up, ignoring the poky elbows and the skeletal ribs and especially the fact that Dean probably hasn’t been this light since before puberty, ignoring the way Dean leans minimally closer to Sam, silent, like he’s cold, like there isn’t enough left of him to care that Sam is carrying him bridal style to the back of the car he’s been driving since he could drive.

“Where are we going?” Sam asks again.

“Doesn’t matter,” Dean says, a little flat, a little faded, “We’re almost there.”

\--

(…two days…)

It’s the late summer, but Dean is shivering like it’s midwinter. Every motel room they get now, Sam makes sure not to memorize it, because he doesn’t want to know the room Dean might die in.

Might die. Sam has failed. He doesn’t know what else he could look. He’s been on every possible website, called all of his father’s friends at least twice. He’s got Bobby on the look out, but so far there’s been nothing. And there isn’t time for another false trail.

Sam stops the car, pulling over to the side of the road. He rests his head on the top of the steering wheel, closes his eyes. It’s the claustrophobia again, not from being in a car he has to slouch in, not from the tens and hundreds of tiny motel rooms, but from the fear that if he doesn’t have everything pushing in on him, he’ll be alone. Really fucking alone. There's fire in his veins and nowhere for it to go. Nowhere for him to go, either. No Mom, no Jess, no Dad, now no Dean. And he can’t do it. He can’t.

Sam doesn’t realize he’s crying until he realizes Dean’s hand is on his back. It’s too light and too clumsy, but still Dean’s. “S’gonna be okay, Sammy,” Dean whispers.

“You’re a liar and a jerk,” Sam mutters back without looking, which is slightly unfair as only one of those things is true.

“Bitch,” says Dean, and maybe that’s a lie, but Sam’s watery smile isn’t.

\--

(…last day…)

They’ve been driving for eleven hours straight when Dean tells him to stop the car. Sam almost swerves off the road in surprise. Dean’s voice is so quiet, so little, that he thinks he might have misheard.

“Stop?” Sam asks.

“Stop,” says Dean, croaky, certain.

“Okay,” says Sam, and as he pulls off of the highway and towards the nearest motel, it doesn’t even occur to him that Dean means stop for good. It’s probably a good thing he doesn’t ask.

\--

Under every cover on both beds, Dean is still shivering rather violently with cold. Sam tries taking one of his hands, and it feels like it’s been stuck in a snow bank (Sam refuses to think like a corpse). Bad circulation, thinks Sam, remembering the list of symptoms he made the doctor email him, but out loud he just says, “Dean, you’re freezing.”

Dean’s eyes are closed, but the side of his mouth pulls up. “Great work… Sherlock.”

Sam huffs a chuckle, though it sounds too empty. “D’you want my coat?”

“Nah.” Dean cracks an eyelid, raises an eyebrow. That eyebrow is a question, a plea, even if his words aren’t. “Spoon with me, gorgeous.”

Sam’s laugh is really just a smile-and-exhale, but it’s a victory. He climbs onto the bed behind his big (older, anyway) brother, wrapping his arms around Dean’s chest to try and warm the shivering away. He’s too little to remember, but Dean does; when Dean was little, maybe seven, and Sam was littler, maybe three, they would curl up just like this. Only, Dean would be the one wrapping his arms around Sam, and Sam, who was incredibly scrawny until he wasn’t, would be the one shivering.

Dean’s close-cropped hair is scratching Sam’s nose as he breathes in the scent of him. Black coffee and leather and motel shampoo.

He can feel Dean’s ribcage expanding with faint, slightly uneven breaths, feel him shiver less and less. For moment, maybe only one, he can pretend that everything is going to be okay.

“Sammy,” says Dean, and it’s not a question. It’s a statement.

“Here,” Sam answers, and that’s a statement too.

\--

Clad in a mismatch of each other’s and their own clothes, two brothers are holding on each other. One of them is too skinny. One of them is too tall. One of them has a faulty heart, and the other’s heart isn’t quite large enough to work for the both of them.

Pleasantly warm against Dean, Sam falls asleep.

Comfortable for the first time in a long while, Dean falls into something deeper.


End file.
